Ren&eacute A. Guzman: Time to pick up the new “Doctor Who” DVD set

Looking for some bloody brilliant sci-fi? Lucky for you the Doctor is most definitely in.

That would be “Doctor Who: The Complete First Series,” a five-disc DVD set of the hit BBC series sure to rock your geeky little world when it hits stores in a timely manner this Fourth of July.

(Courtesy BBC Worldwide)

In case you don’t know the what, when or how of “Who,” think of it as the British “Star Trek” in terms of sci-fi zeitgeist and cult following. “Doctor Who” is the longest running sci-fi series in TV history; it originally ran on the BBC from 1963 to 1989, then re-launched last year in Britain. We blokes across the pond just got the show in March on the Sci-Fi Channel.

After so many decades and Doctors, the Who premise remains pretty much the same: The Doctor is a mysterious Time Lord (conveniently in a human guise) who picks up a sidekick (usually a fetching female) to fight evil as they trapeze through time and space via the Tardis, the Doctor’s ship disguised as a 1950s police box. See? Simple.

This time, we skip across the calendar and the cosmos with Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), a plucky 19-year-old yearning for anything more exciting than her boring retail job, boring boyfriend and boring mum. She gets her wish when store mannequins suddenly come to life and the enigmatic but very energetic Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) swoops in to take her on the adventure of a lifetime.

So what makes this “Who” so ridiculously cool? How about stellar writing, solid acting, much better special effects than its low-budget predecessor and an upbeat mythos that’s as inviting to new audiences as it is respectful to the most hardcore Who fans.

The DVD set delivers all the goods with all 13 eps from “Who’s” first season, as well as more than four hours of behind-the-scenes features. Judging from those bonus goodies I’ve seen, the stars, writers, effects folks and the like are genuinely reverent to the sprawling Who-niverse rather than mere cogs in the pop culture machine.

Eccleston sums up the heart of the show best during the included “BBC Breakfast” interview: “Love life,” he says — and accept it in all its alien forms.

It’s that very juxtaposition of genre and joie de vivre that makes this “Doctor Who” a jolly good time, indeed.